The Dead, The Crippled, And The Lost

Rating: 7/10 (15 June 2008)

"The Longest Day" is unquestionably a product of self-important Hollywood bloat, but it is also a noble attempt to do justice to one of then-recent history's most singular moments, the Normandy landings of June 1944. For the price of sitting through clumsy expository dialogue, misplaced comedy, and thumb-in-your-eye cameos, you get some terrific cinema and a decent war story.
As an opening title tells us, its the fifth year of the German occupation of France, and on both sides of the English Channel, warriors await the inevitable clash of arms. RAF pilot David Campbell (Richard Burton) notes ruefully he is now the last member of his squadron still left from the Battle of Britain. American paratrooper "Dutch" Schultz (Richard Beymer) decides if the landing is on tonight, he'll gamble away his sizable winnings and "jump clean." An unnamed German officer sleeps comfortably in a French farmhouse, his boots off and carelessly arranged.
Much later in the movie, the three men will be found together in a scene that summarizes the film's philosophy at its most pungent: War confirms our universal brotherhood, even with those we kill.
Little moments like that are sprinkled throughout "The Longest Day". Every now and again, you get something more sustained. There's an attack by Free French commandoes at a casino in Ouistreham that sustains a bird's-eye view of the running battle for far longer than any other film I've ever seen, overall by far the best sequence in the movie. The British glider troop assault on Pegasus Bridge comes off effectively by being played in real time, while a botched U.S. parachute drop on a German-occupied village makes for a harrowing sequence.
But "The Longest Day" has its share of misfires; too. A lot of times in the movie, we are taken to a meeting room somewhere so the directors can tell you what is happening. The huge all-star cast is about a few stars too many, either unnecessary (Henry Fonda, Eddie Albert, Rod Steiger) or playing themselves instead of their characters (John Wayne, Red Buttons). By the time the beaches are hit, the film is two-thirds over, and a lot is skimped, especially the most effective of the D-Day landings, the Canadian assault at Juno Beach.
But the overall quality of "The Longest Day" is high, reflecting its big budget as well as a passion for telling the story. Even more than its three sure-handed directors (Brit Ken Annakin, naturalized American Andrew Marton, and German war vet Bernhard Wicki) and numerous screenwriters (including James Jones and Cornelius Ryan, who wrote the book upon which this is based), you have a masterful editing job by Samuel E. Beetley, which sustains the film's galloping pace by keeping less important scenes to the barest minimum. Few films are as long as "The Longest Day", but many feel longer. Too bad for Beetley he was up against "Lawrence Of Arabia"'s Anne V. Coates come Oscar-time; any other year he would have won.
It's not a great film otherwise, but it manages to hold up more than not, leading up to that winning wistful moment when Beymer, Burton, and the German come together. "He's dead...I'm crippled...You're lost. I suppose it's always like that. I mean war."